Build Your own DIY home or lab Storage Spaces Direct Cluster orderd from ebay Part 1

So i built a 2 node S2D cluster a while ago at home on some old HP G6 nodes i got cheap. But have decided to get rid of that and setup a new 3 node cluster with bit’s i can find on ebay. And reuse disks i have. This will be a multipart blog post as the parts are orderd and they come in. And during the build process. I will provide a step by step guide in building it, installing, configuring, monitoring and troubleshooting Storage Spaces Direct. Including switch config.

So the hardware i have decided on is a HP DL380e G8 25sff chassie as it has 2 2.5″ drive bays in the rear including an extra 2 PCIe slot’s. These are addon’s and need to be orderd. So the list of HP hardware is as follows

Networking

I have a Quanta LB8 10Gbit switch that i will start off with and test with. But want to test with a 40Gbit switch as well and is looking into this switch.

Arista DCS-7050QX-32 wich is a 32x40gbit QSFP switch with DCBx functionality. And prised at only 750 USD on ebay it’s a bargain for 40Gbit test lab.

The goal

Is to build a lab to test new builds of Storage Spaces Direct, as it will run insider build on the physical hosts. And install a nested 2 node S2D cluster to test new versions of S2D on. And to start testing out Azure Stack and Project Honolulu with HyperConverged.